IN the jungle of comments on and reaction to the ending of the IRA ceasefire, perhaps the most perceptive and potentially useful has been that of Joe O'Connell, the IRA man who has served 21 years in a British prison for his part in the 1974 bombings.
In a letter published recently in An Phoblacht, O'Connell described the ending of the ceasefire as "the most stupid, blinkered and ill conceived decision ever made by a revolutionary body". These words are perhaps more useful than a million acres of the kind of ritualistic condemnations to which we have become so accustomed.
There is no point in us saying we do not understand why the IRA planted the bomb in London's Docklands a month ago.
There used to be a cliche, much beloved of politicians, which went something like this: "You cannot bomb your way to the negotiating table." Unlike many cliche's, this one was without any element of truth. In fact, you can bomb your way anywhere, so long as you have the will and enough bombs. The proper question is: is bombing your way to the negotiating table a good idea?
This question leads us inexorably to the paradox at the heart of modern Irish republicanism violence, no matter how reprehensible, immoral or stupid, actually seems to work better than anything else. This is not simply my perception it is the extremely forceful subtext of the British response to the IRA ceasefire. Despite the repetition of pious incantations, the truth is that the IRA did bomb its way to the negotiating table.
MOREOVER the message that was sent out by the British establishment since the ceasefire was that bombing is the only way for republicans to gain access to the negotiating table. It became obvious that, now they had stopped bombing and shooting people, nobody was interested in pow wow with republicans. It's not much of a leap on from this startling insight to the perspective that, if republicans were serious about the things they claimed to be serious about, there might still something to be said for planting bombs.
This is not just my logic. It is also the logic of the British government since the ceasefire. Immediately, the British establishment, which for years had been saying that the only requirement for political progress was a cessation of violence, began to up the ante. It wanted decommissioning of arms. It wanted surrender. It wanted an end to punishment beatings. Or at least these are the things it claimed to want.
But, if these had been forthcoming, there would have been more and more demands. Because what it really wanted was for the IRA to go back to bombing and shooting, and that is what has now happened. No matter what you think about the IRA, I doubt if you believe its leaders to be so stupid as to the miss the message they were being sent.
In other words, the reason the IRA bombed London a month ago was that it had received a clear and unequivocal message from the British government that this was the best, possibly the only, way of getting closer to its objectives.
Thus, in addressing the question: is bombing your way to the negotiating table a good idea, we find that the vote from the British jury is that it definitely is. And this, if nothing else, should give the IRA some pause for thought. For surely it is not a good idea for republicans to be doing what the British government wants them to do. This, I believe is what Joe O'Connell was getting at. What he has understood, I believe is that bombing is no longer a productive strategy in this war.
I have long believed that the IRA's armed struggle strategy was blinkered and outmoded. (I also believed it to be reprehensible but there are already more than enough people who do nothing else except talk about this aspect.) I believe that armed struggle is a very bad idea indeed - and not just because it is morally wrong.
I think that republicans must come to terms with the fact that the strategy which has arguably given them a voice in the future of Ireland has now passed into political obsolescence. For all its undoubted capacity to deliver short term political gains, armed struggle has tipped over the balance of advantage with regard to the deeper objectives of republicanism.
If nothing else, the effects of violence on the Irish mind have created such an abhorrence of even the most superficial elements of nationalism and republicanism, that, even if the IRA could deliver its objectives, there would be few willing to participate in the victory. I believe the British government has tumbled the fact that the one way of permanently defeating republicanism is to drive the IRA back to violence. If this is what Joe O'Connell meant when he described the ending of the ceasefire as "stupid", then I believe he is right.
I have no intention of getting into the debate about whether the IRA is the legitimate inheritor of the mantle of 1916. I do not for a moment argue that violence is never justified. Nor would I attempt to suggest it doesn't work.
There were moments in the past 25 years when violence seemed to be the only way of responding to what was happening to nationalists in the North. In my view, such moments were rare and they were used to justify horrendous atrocities which contaminated everything to do with republicanism. It is not possible to identify just one moment at which the pendulum swung from one side to the other but swing it did. Once that happened, the IRA, for all that it was still winning, had started to lose. The paradox had hardened the very element that was keeping republicans in the battle was losing them the war.
Modern warfare is fought primarily in the arena of propaganda. Without public support, military gains have at best a limited value. The real gains are to be made in winning support for the moral basis of your stance. Such an objective is incompatible with almost all violence, especially the kind of violence in which the IRA specialised. By calling the ceasefire, the IRA gave republicanism an unparalleled propaganda weapon.
With the British determined to play games with peace, it may not have looked like this on the surface, but it should not he surprising to find that peace has a different pace to war.
It is time for republicans to stop trying to straddle the paradox and begin to dismantle it. The key is in the differing time frames of peace and war. They need to make a leap of faith, not in John Major or John Bruton, or in the capacity of unionists to be reasonable, but in the strengths of their own case and their own people. They need to think more about the moral authority which would derive from a permanent strategy of nonviolence.
What the IRA might now contemplate is that violence has been rendered old fashioned, that the time may have come for republicans to turn their back on armed struggle. Such a move would short circuit British and unionist game playing. It would enable republicans to seize the initiative to take the conflict into a new dimension. If the IRA doubts this, let it reflect on the confusion such a move would cause among the enemies of republicanism.